Here's How Freddie Mercury Reacted When He First Heard "Ice Ice Baby"

May 18, 2018

Sampling has become an ingrained part of musical culture, and these days, there's an established legal protocol for any artist who wants to reuse a portion of another act's recording.

But in the early '90s, those details were all still being litigated — which is how Queen ended up finding out that the bass line from their hit "Under Pressure" had been lifted for rapper Vanilla Ice's breakout single "Ice Ice Baby."

The saga of Ice's entanglement with Queen is long, sordid, and often hilarious, but we've never known how late singer Freddie Mercury reacted after hearing "Ice Ice Baby" for the first time. It's a scenario we can now imagine courtesy of Mercury's longtime assistant Phoebe Freestone, who recounted her version of events in a blog postrecently added to his official site.